Observation Consistent Integration of Views of Object Life-Cycles

A commonly followed approach in database design is to collect user views on the database and to develop the conceptual schema of the database by integrating these views.

The design of object-oriented databases involves the design of object behavior next to the design of object structure. Object-oriented design notations usually represent object behavior at two levels of detail: by activities (which correspond to methods at the implementation level) and by object life-cycles which model the dynamics of objects over their lifetime.

This paper discusses the integration of views of object life-cycles that are represented by behavior diagrams, which model the behavior of objects by activities and states corresponding to transitions and places of Petri nets. The presented approach is particularly relevant for the design of business processes, a major application domain of object-oriented database systems.